British aeronautical engineer who led the Special Projects Group at Avro Canada through the 1950s, and the designer behind the only saucer-shaped aircraft the record shows a Western military actually built.
What his group did
The line runs from Project Y, a spade-shaped vertical take-off machine, through Avro Project Y2 and the American-funded work that carried the Silverbug designation, to the VZ-9 Avrocar, two of which were built and flown for the US Army and Air Force. The Avrocar was a real aircraft with a real engineering problem: it could not leave its own ground cushion without becoming uncontrollable, which the site’s Avrocar bench reproduces from the declassified performance data.
Why the node closes a gap
The saucer-shaped-craft strand of the record runs partly on the assumption that a working disc was never attempted in the open. It was, by a named engineer, under contract, with the results published. Whatever one makes of the Nazi Flying Disc Legend and the classified claims around it, Frost’s programme is the one that can be checked, and it failed for reasons that had nothing to do with secrecy.
Connections
Avro Project Y2 · Nazi Flying Disc Legend · The Hunt for Zero Point · Nick Cook · Propulsion Configurations · Have Blue